


So Many Foreign Roads

by nahco3



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Amnesia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-16
Updated: 2011-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-24 16:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Villa wakes up staring at a night sky obscured by stadium lights. There’s grass under him, cropped short and slick, good for playing fast passes. There are a couple people kneeling next to him, physios he assumes, but he doesn’t recognize them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Many Foreign Roads

**Author's Note:**

> I owe a huge debt of gratitude to acchikocchi for making me write this, and then for making sure it was coherent and well-paced.
> 
> title is from For Emma, by Bon Iver.
> 
> comments and concrit are always welcome.
> 
> originally posted to my lj.

David Villa wakes up staring at a night sky obscured by stadium lights. There’s grass under him, cropped short and slick, good for playing fast passes. There are a couple people kneeling next to him, physios he assumes, but he doesn’t recognize them.

They’re talking, in quiet, calm voices, maybe to him and maybe to the teammates he knows must be standing beyond them. He can’t understand what they’re saying, but he can guess. His head feels like it’s splitting in half. He pushes himself up on one arm. The noise of the crowd intensifies and David thinks he might throw up.

“I’m ok,” he says, but it comes out slurred. Someone, one of the physios, puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “we’re getting the stretcher, for the love of God, stay still.” His vision blurs in and out, and he shakes his head. Bad plan.

“I need to stay in. The game.” He pauses. He doesn’t remember who they’re playing. He thought they had Real Zaragoza at home - Joaquin had been complaining about it - but this doesn’t feel like La Mestalla. The terraces climbing in his peripheral vision are _wrong_ , not steep enough, not angry enough, he can’t feel the frustration rolling down them and coiling in his stomach. His fucking head hurts.

“It’s ok,” Xavi says to him, materializing out of the crowd, and what the fuck is Xavi doing here. They must be playing Barcelona. “Villa, you need to rest, ok? Trust us, we have this.”

David would roll his eyes except it’s physically painful, because David may not play for the most magical fucking team in history but that doesn’t mean Xavi can condescend to him. But he can’t think of a suitably cutting response and the physios are lifting him onto the stretcher. He tries to turn his head and find Silva, to tell him “I’m ok,” and “fucking destroy them for me,” and who knows what else, but he’s nowhere, all he sees are Barcelona jerseys. David twists up, suddenly really afraid, what the fuck happened, what if he got injured too, where is he, I need to see him right now.

The physio pins his shoulders down. “Dammit, stay still.” And David snarls back at him, “I will when you tell me what happened to Silva.”

“Silva?” the man asks and someone somewhere over David’s head makes a noise of concern.

“He’s in Manchester,” Xavi says, and David thinks about punching him because that’s not funny, not even a little bit, but then he’s being carried off the pitch to a standing ovation and he has to shut his eyes against the pain.

\--

“I’m going to ask you some questions now,” a doctor says to David. “They may seem a little silly to you, but I’d like you to answer them to the best of your ability.”

They’re in a small room, somewhere in the depths of the stadium. David is lying down on one of those paper-lined exam tables, and the doctor is standing over him, looking into his eyes. An assistant is standing next to him, poised to take notes.

“Ok,” David says, wondering where Dr. Frasquet is, why this man he doesn’t recognize is here with him.

“What is your name?”

“David Villa.”

“Where are we now?”

“Barcelona. Camp Nou,” David says, nearly sure he is correct. The doctor gives a slight nod and David feels relieved. He’s fine, just a little headache.

“What day is it?” And this, this David is not so sure of. But he’s always been bad with dates; when he was a kid, he used to have to fix the date on top of his homework sometimes three or four times. He always returns library books late, relies, he knows, too much on his iPhone.

“November,” he says, because they were in Prague a few days ago and it was cold, winter advancing. He was on the bench since he’s been fucking red carded in the first leg, and when Silva had come off, he’d shared David’s blanket. It had been kind of nice. “November 8th.”

“What year?” the doctor asks, in the same voice. Meanwhile, his assistant is scribbling furiously.

“2009,” David says.

\--

Xavi drives him to the hospital. David has a car in the players’ parking lot, brand new, presumably bought with his signing bonus. It’s black and flashy in an understated way. David kind of hates it. Xavi is incredibly decent about all of it actually; he gets David’s phone and his iPad (which ok - awesome, the future has some perks) from his locker, while David stays in a dark room, his eyes shut. The light makes the pain in his head worse, and he’s glad of the privacy.

Getting to the car is a fucking trial. They wait until the stadium’s almost empty, so David doesn’t have to deal with the noise of the crowd and the flashes of cameras pressing in at him. They don’t stretcher him out, but a doctor walks a step behind him, to make sure he doesn’t collapse or something.

The drive to the hospital is pretty quiet, since anyone talking makes David’s head pound, and he has to keep his eyes shut against the nighttime glow of the traffic and street lights. Once they get to the hospital, he’s loaded into a wheelchair, which he knows he should object to but really, he’s about to throw up, and it’s a relief to be able to keep his eyes shut.

“Someone’ll be back tomorrow,” Xavi tells him. “You’re doing great, David.” He claps him on the shoulder gently and is gone, melting away and leaving David even more confused. The doctors stick an IV in his arm and tell him to stay awake all night - people will apparently be coming in to check that he doesn’t fall into a coma randomly, blah blah whatever.

One of the doctors tells him that his memories should begin to return “soon” and that, pending more tests, God willing, he’ll be fine. He asks David if David has any questions; David doesn’t, at least, not any this asshole can answer. Finding out about the last two years of his life from this random man feels _wrong_ in a way he can’t describe.

When the doctors finally leave, David grabs his phone off the side table and scrolls through his contacts, calls Silva.

He lies back on his pillow with his eyes shut and listens to the phone ring, three, four, five times, until finally Silva picks up.

“Villa?” he asks.

“Hey,” David says, “did you see my game?”

“I had a game too,” Silva says (reminds him? David can’t tell). “Why?”

David shifts minutely and then immediately regrets it. “I um, I guess some asshole hit my head pretty hard and I. I kind of don’t remember anything.”

“What do you mean, anything?” Silva asks, sharply. “And Jesus, are you ok?”

“I’m in the hospital; I’m fine,” David tells him. Silva makes a sound that might be a laugh at that but David presses on. “The last thing I remember is um, you came over to my house, after we got back from Prague? And we.” David pauses, not because he’s embarrassed but because this happened yesterday for him, because he still thinks he should be waking up next to Silva, getting ready for Zaragoza that night. It feels immediate, like he should be able to reach back into that moment and ruffle Silva’s hair, press a kiss into the side of his neck. “You came over to my house,” he says, again, suddenly desperate to know he’s not making all this up, that Silva remembers too, that it was all real and even if he can’t go back to it, he wants to know it fucking happened, that it wasn’t some hallucination he had on the pitch of Camp fucking Nou.

“Oh,” Silva says. “Oh, David.”

David lets out a shaky breath. “Yeah,” he says, pressing his eyes shut tight and wishing Silva were here.

“What did, um, what did they tell you?” Silva asks.

“Nothing,” David says. “Well, I guess Xavi mentioned you’re in Manchester. But what’s there to tell? Valencia didn’t have shit and they sold us to pay off their debts, clearly. I mean, I don’t know why I joined FC Self-Righteous, but I assume they gave Valencia my weight in gold and I didn’t have much say in it. How’s United?”

“I play for City, actually,” Silva says, amused, and David gets a shivery feeling all through him and kind of wants to kiss him.

“No shit, really? What’s it like?”

Silva thinks about it for a second. “We’re kind of perpetual fuck-ups,” he says at last, laughing a little. “I like it, it reminds me of home.”

David smiles and shuts his eyes again, leaning back into the thin and uncomfortable pillows. “Tell me about it. I can’t go to sleep, so. Might as well see if I can remember anything.”

“I have practice tomorrow morning,” Silva says, regretful.

“Please?” David asks. He feels vulnerable, opened up, and somehow the distance between him and Silva makes it easier to ask, makes it easier to need.

Silva sighs, and David can picture him running a hand through his hair, his rueful smile. “I guess I should start with World Cup, then,” he says.

“How did we do in that?” David asks.

“We won,” Silva says, quiet and private, like it’s something he can give just to David, like the whole world doesn’t already know.

“Shit.” David tries to remember, thinks about Euros, tries to imagine that rising joy, that invincibility, but more powerful, brighter and sharper. He can’t.

“Tell me about it.”

“Shut up and I will,” Silva says, gentle, and David does.

\--

They discharge him the next morning. There isn’t anything else the doctors can do, other than forbid him from playing and “encourage him to do whatever he can to trigger his memories.” Which, right, yeah, helpful, because David wouldn’t have thought to try _getting his memories back_ without medical advice.

“I’m concussed, not stupid,” he tells Cesc, who’s come to the hospital to drive him home.

“Who says you can’t be both?” Cesc says, and David gives him his best death stare. Cesc doesn’t seem to notice.

Cesc’s a surprisingly good driver, breaks slowly and doesn’t take turns too fast, his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. David appreciates it - his head is still pounding. David’s wearing a pair of Carlota’s sunglasses, with bright pink frames. Cesc had noticed him glaring at the sun, and foisted them on him; the refracting sun too piercing for David to refuse them.

“Have any questions?” Cesc asks, when they’re stopped at a red light. “I mean, I haven’t been back in Spain for that long but I figure I can help with some stuff. If you’re curious.”

“When did you transfer?”

“This summer,” Cesc says, “August 15.” His voice is level, controlled, his hands tight on the wheel, and David wonders if they don’t have this in common somehow: the places they’ve left, the pang of infidelity you can’t quite push past even as you need more, need out.

They’re both quiet for a second, and the light changes. “So. World Cup,” says David, and Cesc’s grins, looking again like the kid David remembers.

“Who told you? One of the doctors?”

“No. David. Um, David Silva. I called him last night,” David says, running his hands up and down his thighs, a nervous habit.

Cesc turns to look at him, quickly, his face briefly serious and unfamiliar.

“I didn’t think you guys talked much anymore,” Cesc says, finally. “How was he?”

“Good, he sounded good,” David says, his mind racing back, trying to remember if Silva sounded like he - if he sounded like he’d - “They won their game this weekend,” David finishes, when Cesc seems to be waiting for more.

“Good,” Cesc says, and turns down an unfamiliar street, takes David to a house he doesn’t recognize.

\--

He doesn’t have anything to do. He goes online and searches “David Villa goals” on youtube. It’s a place to start. He remembers, if not every goal he’s ever scored, certainly most of them. For a while it’s fun. He’s glad he’s still good. Fuck that, he’s great. He’d been vaguely and indistinctly afraid that he’d lost something in the time he forgot, his touch, his sense of the pitch around him. It’s safe to say he hasn’t.

He watches World Cup highlights, Champion’s League highlights, watches himself win the league. Then he goes back to Valencia and suddenly it isn’t fun anymore.

For Barcelona, for Spain, watching the clips was like playing himself on ProEvo. The person on the screen wasn’t him, exactly, but it was close enough. It was a game. This is different, and he can’t remember and he won’t ever be able to go back - won’t win the league with them, won’t win them the Copa del Rey again, won’t ever fight for uncertain glory there, won’t fill La Mestalla with echoes of his name. It’s done.

“Fuck this,” David says, slamming his laptop shut and stalking into the kitchen. He tries to make himself a cup of coffee, but he can’t find his mugs, his spoons, his coffee. He opens one drawer after another, searching frantically and leaving them open when he’s done, and can’t find what he needs.

When he finally finds everything, he can’t get his coffee maker to turn on, and he’s reduced to flipping random switches, turning knobs, until it spits steam at him. He leaves spilled coffee grounds on the counter, slams his hips into the counter top walking to the kitchen table.

“Fuck,” David says, pinching the bridge of his nose and swiping furiously at his eyes. He calls Silva.

“Hello?” Silva answers.

“I can’t make my coffee maker work,” David tells him, frustration spreading vicious and uncontained within him.

“You could go to a coffee shop?” Silva suggests, voice distracted.

“I don’t know where my fucking car keys are,” David says, pushing the heels of his hands against his eyes, wiping the moisture off on his jeans. “David. I.”

“David,” Silva’s voice says, “David, you’ll remember eventually.”

“That’s not,” David snarls, “that’s not. Why did Cesc say we don’t talk anymore?” Except that’s not it either, or at least, not all of it.

“We do,” Silva says, “just not as much.”

“Do we - did we - ?” and David can’t make himself ask, could never find these words when he needed them.

“No. We,” and Silva pauses, for a long time. David would think he hung up but he can hear him breathing, steady. “We still do sometimes. It’s just hard with. With everything.”

“And I’m. I’m supposed to be ok with that? I’m supposed to ok with all of this because. Because I have all these fucking trophies I don’t even fucking remember and you’re ok with it since, since you have a team and -”

“David,” Silva says, his voice tight, “David, how could I be. How could I be ok with this.” He gives a hollow laugh. “We have to, we both, we have new teams. We have new lives. That’s football. It. You keep going and mostly that’s enough.”

“I don’t want to remember,” David says. “I want. I want to stay - I want to go back -”

“You don’t mean that,” Silva says, and David wishes he knew this David Silva better. “It isn’t so bad, now.”

David laughs, wetly. “I don’t believe you.”

“Things can be. They can be shitty and good at the same time,” Silva says. “Anyway. You were always the ambitious one.”

“Yeah,” David says, a soft syllable because he doesn’t have anything else to say, because he wouldn’t know how to say it.

“It’ll work out,” Silva says, promising them both. “I’ll see you at the international break.”

“When is that?” David asks, desperate.

“Two weeks,” Silva says, and David’s dully glad Silva knows that, immediately.

\--

David spends the rest of the afternoon trying not to remember, or, more accurately, trying not to think. He can’t work out, because he’s fucking concussed; he tries to watch tv but he can’t stay still, paces back and forth, flips between the news and a _telenovela_ , dissatisfied by both.

He’s hungry but nauseous at the same time, which fucking figures. The news turns into a sports highlight show, and David grabs the remote and turns the tv off, throws the remote on the coffee table. He lies down on the couch and stares up at the unfamiliar ceiling.

“Fuck this,” he says. His head is pounding in time with his heartbeat, and he presses his eyes shut, lies immobile in the gathering dusk, his thoughts disconnected and discontented, until he can slide sideways into sleep.

He wakes up in the dark, stands and immediately stubs his toe on his coffee table.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, rubbing his foot with one hand and reaching for the light switch with the other.

The lights come on. He looks at the switch; next to his kitchen door, where he expected it would be.

“Oh,” he says, and grabs his phone. It’s just after two in the morning; he walks into the kitchen and finds the list of club numbers taped to the side of his fridge, dials the medical staff.

There’s a pre-recorded message: press one if you have cold or flu-like symptoms, press two if you have sports related injury, on and fucking on. He stays on the line, obediently, since he wants to speak to a club medical professional.

“Hello,” a voice at the other end of the line says, “how can I help you?”

“This is Villa,” David tells them, “I. My memory came back.”

“Good,” the doctor tells him. “Come by the facility tomorrow for another CAT scan, and if you notice any new dizziness or disorientation call us immediately.”

“Is that. So I’m good?”

“For right now, yes. This is very encouraging.”

“Fucking fabulous,” David mutters.

“What?” the doctor asks.

“Sorry for calling so late,” David tells him. “I’ll come in tomorrow morning.” He hangs up, sits back down at his kitchen table; the hum of the lights makes his head ache, distantly. Before he can change his mind, he sends Silva a text: _I remember._

He puts his head in his hands, rubs the sleep out of his eyes. He isn’t physically tired, but he feels wrung out, emptied, his chest strangely light.

The moon is out, low, under the clouds. David stands, gets his running shoes from the hallway. He opens the door, checks to make sure his spare key is still hidden under the flower pot. David can’t see his breath, but the air is damp, cool, it clings to his skin. He goes running; he knows the way.

\--

By the time David gets to his room, he’s ready to fucking pass out. The flight from Barcelona to Madrid had been fine; he’d watched half an action movie on his iPad, pausing it to play some stupid flash game every two minutes, unable to concentrate on anything.

On the ground, he left his headphones in, skipping songs after the first thirty seconds. Nothing satisfied him. He shared a cab with Xavi and Iniesta, looked out the window so he didn’t have to talk to them, like he fucking cared how Madrid looked - slow press of traffic and golden pools of street lights, dark store fronts and bored teenagers.

The front of the hotel was mobbed with press, the lobby not much better. David took his ear buds out, signed autographs, gave half-smiles. He kept getting distracted, looking sideways, thinking he saw Silva in his peripheral vision.

So getting to his room is a relief. He doesn’t both unpacking, just lies down on the bed and shuts his eyes.

There’s a knock on the door.

“Fuck off, Ramos,” he calls, without malice. “I don’t have time to beat your ass at FIFA tonight.”

“It’s not Ramos,” Silva says, from the other side of the door.

David sits up, his chest tight. “Right,” he calls, “coming.” He hasn’t talked to Silva since - since.

He opens the door, and Silva’s there. There are shadows under his eyes; he has a day’s growth of stubble. He tilts his face up, just slightly, and smiles at David, little creases forming around his eyes.

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah,” David says, stepping aside.

“How’s your head?” Silva asks, sitting on the bed. David’s caught for a second by the slim line of his shoulders, the curve of his neck.

“Good,” David says. “I don’t think I need to start wearing like, a Petr Cech bonnet or anything, which is always a plus.”

“It would ruin your hair,” Silva says, trying to keep a straight face and failing, biting his lip to restrain his smile.

“Shut up,” David tells him, sitting next to him, “just because you walk around with bed head all day doesn’t mean the rest of us like to.”

Silva raises an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t respond directly. Instead, he puts a hand tentatively over David’s. “About. About the other week -”

David can’t meet his eyes, wants to push Silva back onto the mattress and pin his hands over his head and kiss him, suddenly can’t stand the gentleness of his touch.

“I’m fine,” David says. And he is. He’s spent the last two weeks being fine, because he doesn’t think about Silva’s laugh, because he doesn’t look back, because he doesn’t fucking torture himself like that. He’s a professional.

Silva shifts his weight, moving to straddle David. He puts a hand on the back of David’s neck, his thumb nail catching David’s pulse for just a second. David’s looking into his eyes now, can’t look anywhere else.

“I know,” Silva says, “David, I know,” quiet and unrestrained, and lets David tangle his hands in Silva’s hair, greedy.

“We’re fine,” David tells him, and kisses him and kisses him.


End file.
